Doha : Qatar Airways' return to the tourist-driven destination Windhoek of Namibia comes soon after inaugurating Kano (KAN) and Port Harcourt (PHC) in Nigeria.
The airline will reintroduce services to Windhoek on June 25. There will be 3x weekly flights using 254-seat B787-8s, the carrier's aircraft of choice for Africa, with 22 business seats and 232 in economy.
According to reports, the airline has virtually four million Africa seats for sale this year. That is up by a whopping 82 per cent over summer 2019 (S19), when it had 2.2 million.
Africa now represents nearly one in every six seats for sale by Qatar Airways; a significant change from S19. It is hugely more than for Turkish Airlines (one in every 14) and more than Emirates (one in eight).
The Qatar flag carrier's Africa network has risen to 31. KAN and PHC took off at the start of March 2022, while Abidjan (ABJ), Abuja (ABV), Accra (ACC), Harare (HRE), Luanda (LAD), Lusaka (LUN), and Sharm El Sheikh (SSH) were all added since the pandemic started.
Following the end of the blockade, they were joined by the return of Alexandria (HBE), Cairo (CAI), and Luxor (LXR). Qatar Airways also reintroduced Khartoum (KRT), which it ceased serving in early 2019 because of the boycott imposed by Saudi Arabia and others that resulted in significantly longer routings to reach Sudan.